Wednesday, 26 June 2013

Alasdair Bouch is not strictly Welsh and indeed is now based in Prague, but he did begin his musical career while in University in Bangor. Not only did Alasdair (affectionately known as Ali B... well before the existence of Ali G) work in the legendary Cob Records, but he was also responsible for turning upper Bangor's Greek Taverna into a music venue back in the early 90s. His tireless promotion of live music in the town created a platform for many of the area's young musicians to showcase their talents (or lack thereof). To this day, the Greek Taverna remains a vibrant venue for upcoming local musicians thanks to the work of Ali B.

Since leaving Bangor and relocating to Prague, Alasdair has released three excellent CD albums, ranging from the
alternative folk-blues sound of his debut First Person Singular,
via the raw soul power-pop of Second-hand Lullabies to his recent Third Time Lucky which beats in a
old-school rhythm 'n' blues vein, shot
through with classic drivetime rock and ballads. Over the past few years he has played 457 concerts across Europe!

Whenever Turquoise Coal finds itself in the Czech Republic, we never fail to hook up with the talented troubadour for an evening of pivo and reminiscence, as we did most recently last month.

Here's a great new video for Alasdair's song Bed of Happiness - you can't go wrong with a Trabant in a video... unless, of course you're U2!

Alasdair's three albums are available for sale at concerts, or as downloads from iTunes and other digital outlets.

We hope to unearth lost, forgotten or obscure music from the north Wales music scene of the past few decades and make it available again, or in many cases, for the first time.

Much of the music here has never seen an official release, and the stuff that has is all currently out of print as far as we know. Wherever possible, at least one member of the respective band has given permission for their music to be uploaded, but if anyone else has a claim to the copyright of anything here that they object to being shared, please get in touch with us and we will remove it.

All downloads are encoded as 320 kbs mp3s, providing as reasonably good quality sound as can be expected in the circumstances.